Thomas Friedman extends his evangelization of Free Trade and Globalization in his book titled The World is Flat. He isolates different periods in history he calls flatteners that paved the way for Globalization and Free Trade.

First, he ignores the fact that workers have no voice in the process of Globalization. International entities like the WTO control the flow of trade and money outside any real democratic process. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans an underclass was exposed. It also exposed a silent depression residing in New Orleans that could be duplicated across the USA.
Author and Education Consulant Brian Alger provides an overview of Ray Tapajna and Tapart News and Art that Talks about workers having no voice in their workday even though they are the core of any economy. Ray calls it "communications by rank".

Ray Tapajna explores other lost worlds in the Flat World of Friedman and points to 1956 as the year everything was put upside down. Free Trade is not trade as historically defined and practiced. Somehow, trade became a process with production and factories being moved from place to place based on the cheapest labor markets. There is no need for conspiracy theories to know some power start this forced march to Globalization where workers become the commodities. In essence it is a new kind of slave trade with wage slave labor. Thomas Friedman seems to like leading the march.
Workers are put on a world trading block to compete with one another down to the lowest common levels of wage slave and even child labor. How did it start?

The U.S. Government itself sponsored and funded the moving of factories outside the USA starting in 1956. It was supposed to be just a temporary program to help the Mexican and Central Americas' economies while in turn supply the U.S. consumer with cheaper goods. The program never ended and turned into what is now called Free Trade. It took about 20 years to move about two hundred factories outside the USA. However the numbers start dramatically increasing and by 1992, more than 2,000 factories were moved to Mexico. It was know as the Maquiladora factory program. Here sweat shops were created on the other side of the border with some companies sending segments of production that no longer legal under U.S. pollution laws.

After the unfair trade agreements NAFTA and GATT were passed in 1993, the number quickly doubled to more than 4,000 factories that were moved to Mexico. After leading the way in getting these agreements passed, President Clinton had to rush billions of dollars to Mexico to save the peso. This proves the history of Free Trade up to that date was a history of failures.

For more of the story and the fiction behind Freidman Flat World including the mixing of the cause and effect behind the Y2k crisis, see Tapsearch Com's analysis at http://tapsearch.com/flatworld. It links to more history about the failures of Free Trade at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews and http://tapsearch.com/globalization.